I FOUND GELATO IN LOS ANGELES!!!!!!!!!! yummy, creamy, delicious gelato. goodbye diet, hello extra 20 pounds!

it's called Al Gelato, but i will lobby for a name-change to "Karen's Second Home." i tried the banana and coconut. but i also tasted the blackberry, pistachio, and honeydew. all were amazing. and to make things even better, they serve great pasta and pizza, and whenever you order food you get big slices of crusty bread with a dish of olives and a jar of pickled peppers.

i heard a radio interview with laura bush recently, and the interviewer asked her what the president has been reading lately. she said that he just finished reading The Emperor of Ocean Park (by Stephen Carter)....but so have i! i don't know what to think now...i mean, i feel like now we share some kind of literary comraderie, and i can no longer hate him as much because he, too, enjoyed the book.

some time in the past few weeks, geroge w. bush and i were reading the same book at the exact same time. *shudder*

Two passages, out of order, from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

“In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married for thirty years they were like a single divided being, and they felt uncomfortable at the frequency with which they guessed each other’s thoughts without intending to, or the ridiculous accident of on of them anticipating in public what the other was going to say. Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful of their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

“Dr. Urbino caught the parrot around the neck with a triumphant sigh: ca y est. But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from underneath his feet and for an instant he was suspended in air and he realized that he had died without Communion, without time to repent of anything or to say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday.
“Fermina Daza was in the kitchen tasting the soup for supper when she heard Digna Pardo’s horrified shriek and the shouting of the servants and then of the entire neighborhood. She dropped the tasting spoon and tried her best to run despite the invincible weight of her age, screaming like a madwoman without knowing yet what had happened under the mango leaves, and her heart jumped inside her ribs when she saw her man lying on his back in the mud, dead to this life but still resisting death’s final blow for one last minute so that she would have time to come to him. He recognized her despite all the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath: ‘Only God knows how much I loved you.’”

i forgot Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess at work today, and am now suffering from acute separation anxiety.

Life really sucks ass right about now.

i just ate 1/2 scoop of ice cream, and i feel so guilty. i hate this cholesterol-free, taste-free diet thing. it puts me in a bad mood.

which reminds me: i am so fucking tired of this prospective employer stringing me along!! FIVE interviews and TWO job offers later, they have yet to give me a definitive answer as to whether i can quit my current job to work for them. goddammit, i am at a standstill because their offer is too good to take lightly, and all they can do is make vague promises (that THEY initiate, mind you) and tell me to keep in touch or that they're just on the edge of a decision. I'm even in salary negotiations with them for chrissakes, yet i've received no concrete offer letter and no go-ahead to resign my current job. I'm losing hope...and self-esteem. A year after graduating from college, I'm still puttering around in a dead-end boring job, having learned little to nothing that I couldn't have taught myself, about to be knee-deep in law school application fee debt when i have no idea how the hell i'm going to be able to afford law school in the first place, living paycheck-to-paycheck with no clear vision of my future career plans, no longer on speaking terms with my evil stepmother, and generally stressed the hell out for fear that i am, in reality, merely a mediocre peon unwilling to admit my inferiority.

okay, i'm done whining.

my doctor told me last week to severely limit my intake of cholesterol, so the whole week i ate nothing but vegetables and ungreasy food. then, the weekend came, and i am now chock-full of artery clogging cholesterol. among other things, i ate: fried lobster, fried crab, rotisserie chicken with garlic butter, gelato...the list goes on. the point of that previous rambling being...i found good homemade gelato that isn't in Italy! although it is in san diego, which is defintely too far to go on spontaneous gelato-runs.

this week, i cured myself of a long-time addiction, and i am never turning back: i abandoned my hotmail account. instead, i now have yahoo, where i have 4mb storage space and am not deluged with spam offering me a larger penis. my new address is: meow61212@yahoo.com. actually, i will still be checking my hotmail periodically, so i haven't quit cold-turkey yet. one day at a time.

i am overcome with the fear that, now in his older and wiser days, my cat has decided that he does not love me anymore. he loves my father, but not me. then again, my dad feeds him sirloin steak, and i only feed him chef's blend (sprinkled on top of his wet cat food, cut into cubes, and microwaved for 10 seconds). i do everything i can to try to win him over, but i just really don't think he's gotten over my painting his paws green last june. i have the sneaking suspicion that he's only using me for food.

i'm SO over my closet. it's hopeless. it's actually impeccably organized, but now my room is filled with everything that used to be in my closet...and my room is a total mess! i'd rather have a messy closet and clean room than a messy room and clean closet.

my new strange obsession has become...chess. ever since i finished reading The Emperor of Ocean Park, I've been really wanting to learn to play chess well. i am now reading Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.

closet cleaning....chess strategy books....um, can i get any more nerdy?

I was listening to NPR on my way to work this morning, and came across live coverage of Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly.

Here is the Text of Bush's speech to United Nations. keep in mind while reading the text of the speech that Bush pronounces "nuclear" like this: "Noo-cue-lar"....puts a whole new pinon things. hasn't anyone told him that he's butchering the one word he keeps using to make his powerful, moving points?

Laughable pronunciation aside, I agree with the analysts that this is a well-written speech (amont other things, it is certainly vague enough while still managing to warn of US unilateral military action). Hooray for Bush's speech writers!

He still doesn't have a point though. Here's why.

ugh. i am very sick. i crawled out of bed to make myself chicken soup, and then while i was eating it, i was convinced of the unequivocal hatred that god must harbor towards me, because a cricket jumped into my soup and drowned itself. now i do not have the energy to make more soup (and even if i did, i wouldn't be able to taste it anyway) so i will lay in bed some more and read about people more miserable than i (El Amor en los Tiempos de Colera ).

Weekend recap:

Thursday...went to Felix's and shared 2 bottles of wine. Then, headed down to Er and Francis', where I drank 3 more bottles of San Miguel and then commenced taking swigs out of the bottle of Jack and Southern Comfort with the guys. I drank like a man, dammit! The next thing i remember I'm throwing up all of my salmon on the side of the freeway. Here are a few highlights (some i do not remember):
*Group primal scream
*Er pouring beer into Mike's ear
*Jon wanting to jump through the living room window very very much
*Er throwing office chair at Mike
*People throwing one another into the bathtub full of ice
*Joe prostrate on the cement with his head in a bush
*Loud drunken rendition of "drop, baby drop, baby drop, drop all your love on me"

I wake up in the morning, still drunk (I find out later that just about everyone else woke up drunk too....worst of all was Mike, who woke up drunk still in the hallway of the empty apartment) and drag myself to work. Somehow i make it through, and then head to church retreat! Hypocritical, you say? I fully agree. Spent the weekend soaking in mineral hot springs, eating resort food, staring at the beautiful lake and black swans....and i must admit, not praying very much at all. I have some issues to work through, but I do not know if I will find the answers at church retreat.

After a weekend of heartfelt talks, admonitions, and altar-calls set to the weepy picking of a guitar, i have only been able to recoil at what now appears to me as emotional manipulation...preying on the insecurities and wounds of a few kids who are hurting so much inside. the altar call dangles in front of you the shiny carrot of forgiveness for your sins, healing for your pain, communion with your peers...but at the price, in my humble opinion, of your self-reliance.

i am not saying that we as humans can ever be self-reliant....but we must learn before we submit to a higher power the abitlity to discern the things caused by our own actions from those directed by divine intervention. too often it seems that whenever i'm wrong, it's because i'm an imperfect sinner and i deserve all the bad things that happen, yet whenever anything good happens to me, i should thank god for his blessing. i want my successes, as well as my failures, to be my own.

even so, i realize that just because i want something to be a certain way doesn't mean that it is.

....tonight, i'm cleaning out my closet.....

....literally. It's become a major obsession. We had to refloor it, so I took everything out, and now i cannot for the life of me figure out how everything will ever fit back in. I have spent countless hours cleaning my damned closet. I have bought no less than $150 worth of baskets, boxes, hangers.. the works.

I ditch my friends so i can clean (i can't imagine how they must feel when i say,"sorry, i'd go out with you but i gotta clean my closet tonight").... sheesh.

witness exhibit A:
TiIvIIvIy: wanna come by and clean my room while ur at it?
Baby61212: no, i have my closet to deal with
TiIvIIvIy: after ur closet is ok too
Baby61212: my... closet...will never be okay *sob*
Baby61212: it's impossible, i am beginning to believe
TiIvIIvIy: they have support groups for ppl like u

last night i went to my "Happy Spot," which i remembered to be a remote and beautiful tiny little beach in Laguna....and realized, to my charign, thst many other people have discovered this place since i last came here! They got rid of the favorite rock i used to sit on and put a bathroom there!!!! ugh. and there was a group of about 15-20 loud screaming drunk people.

I was so shocked, and sad. whatever though, it was still beautiful. The moon was almost full and the waves were just crashing down with a giant roar that drowned out all of the noise, both outside and inside of me.

i bring all my good friends here at one point or another, and this little beach holds for me so many memories of good conversations, sunsets, and dark beautiful nights. I always imagine that, sitting on the sand, if i just squint hard enough i can see the specters of my past.... me sitting on my rock (now a concrete bathroom) and singing to the moon.....climbing over the rocks to another inlet where sometimes a few sea-lions play....pondering the erosion of time on the human life over a bottle of champagne....and things don't seem so bad anymore, because i remember how fortunate i am to have friends who will listen to the waves and exchange hopes, fears, and dreams with me all night long.

Hey everyone! Let's all donate $10 to The Time Travel Fund and get whisked away to the future!!!!! Seconds after your donation, you just may disappear into thin air, and reappear sometime hundreds or even thousands of years into the future! I wonder how much money these guys have made...

Try, just try, to read this article (courtesy of Mat's blog) and not laugh hysterically:

LAB MICE DIE AFTER DRUGS, DISCO


LONDON (AP) - The government on Monday reprimanded scientists who plied mice with drugs and loud dance music to study the effect on their brains. The Home Office said it was taking "infringement action" against Cambridge University researchers who injected mice with the stimulant methamphetamine and subjected them to loud music, including tracks by dance act The Prodigy. Several mice died and others suffered brain damage in the experiment, whose results were published in the journal NeuroReport last year.


Animal rights activists condemned the experiment. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection called it "tasteless and horrific." The experiment was part of a wider study looking at the effect of amphetamine on a the striatum, a brain region that degenerates in Huntington's disease, a fatal, inherited brain disorder. The findings suggested that loud pulsating noise like that found in dance clubs could intensify the drug's toxic effects. Researchers studied 238 mice, injecting half with salt and half with the drug. While the mice injected with salt fell asleep when music was played, the drugged mice appeared to jiggle backward and forward.


Scientists found that the drugged mice suffered more speed-induced brain damage than normal. Seven mice who listened to the Prodigy died, as did four who were played music of a similar tempo by Bach. The Home Office, the government department responsible for overseeing rules for animal research, did not say what form of action had been taken against the scientists.

i think whoever said that it is better to have loved and lost than to never loved at all, was clearly smoking crack. who believes in love anymore anyway? emanon says: "love is just word for the lack of a better term, a substitute for the word with four letters," and i daily wonder about the veracity of it all.

lately i have been finding myself with a silly grin on my face, sniffing at my wrists (which smell like Escape for men), daydreaming about weekends and pine trees and blue pillows, and trying to pinpoint the exact moment at which i began to fall.....and then some part of me, deep inside, screams "STOP, you idiot!!!" and i relent that alas, i am more of a spineless sap than i ever feared. some part of me tries to explain that perhaps i am merely afraid of being happy, yet past experience tells me that hoping against hope is a very dangerous pastime indeed, and a hole that i will probably end up falling into despite my every fiber of common sense telling me otherwise. and as i proceed into the valley of the shadow of death, here it is, written (well, typed) out, stored electronically for posterity, so that later, i can tell myself, "I TOLD YOU SO."

---

by sherry, from The Joint Ascension....

When did all of us chicks grow dicks?
Risk heart and mind just for kicks?
To fake ecstasy will make us sick;
Subject us to courage that cannot stick.

Legacy....
drink with me to days gone by.....






Photos of francis's birthday, courtesy of jonruizonline.com

alright, i am convinced that Fate woke up this morning and decided to take a big fat shit on me yet again, since i got into ANOTHER car accident today. i was rear-ended by a F-150 and the damage isn't too bad at all, but dammit, i'm sick of car trouble!!!!!!! i got a new car so i wouldn't have to deal with taking my old car into the shop, and a month later.... *CRUNCH*! i hope the girl who hit me is nice enough to pay for the damage out-of-pocket, as we are trying to keep the insurance companies out of this.

on the brighter side....i am still basking in the glow of a rather relaxing and much-needed weekend away in big bear where i went alpine sledding, tried to hike, breathed crisp, cool mountain air to the delight of my smog-infused lungs, walked around the lake, watched vanilla sky and blissfully soaked in the jacuzi till i was all wrinkled and resembled a 108-pound prune. and i ate massive amounts of meat... dr. atkins would be proud. :)

i don't know what this means....just an exercise in rhyming i suppose:

the walls torn asunder
the Holy veil ripped open
amid a peal of thunder
the somnolence that wakens
the insolence that weakens
the dropping of a token
the lighting of a beacon
the tragedy that follows
the receding of tomorrow
the darkness that binds us
the lies left behind us
the sunlight this morning
and ominous warning
the slaughtering of the Lamb
the rise and fall of man
the ebbing tide of flood
Pontius Pilate washing his hands
in a river full of blood.

---

chambers
of the heart and mind
like a tangled string unwind
spectres
of a life half-lived
decisions, reactions, forced through a sieve
hold back the thoughts they don't want you to think
until all that is left is a diluted dream
and we continue to sink.

We don't own our pets....they own us.

SmilEx4eVa: OH MY GOODNESS ! My hamster chewed thru the box and IS FREAKIN" LOOSE
OH MY GOD!
SmilEx4eVa: BRB
Baby61212: yikes!!!
SmilEx4eVa: ok... hamster emergency... i'll talk to u later
SmilEx4eVa: he chewed straight thru the corner of the box
SmilEx4eVa: he's sooo cute! u gotta meet mo

---

lifted this from Stella's blog....very intriguing:


Who am I?
Who the fuck am I?
Who are you?
Do you know who you are?
Alls I know is there is a revolution.
THERE IS A REVOLUTION.
And I am the revolution.
I am the revolution that resists bullshit.
The bullshit that gets spit into my face
The horse dung that gets smeared onto my face
What am I talking about?
I’m talking about who I am.
I’m human first of all.
Second of all, I’m Asian American.
What is Asian American?
Asian American is being human.
What is being Caucasian, African, Hispanic, European, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Asian?
Isn’t it about being human?
Then why are people so mother lovin INHUMANE?
Why the fuck do brothers and sisters of the world go out and mortally and mentally wound each other?
Why is it that when I want to show everyone love I am labeled a “wanna-be”?
Why the fuck do I get asked the same mother fucking mundane questions?
Why is it that I am generalized, categorized, stereotyped, and did I already mention GENERALIZED?
Why is it that most Caucasian, African, Hispanic, European, Indian, and Middle Eeastern person I meet that lives here in America are automatically accepted as an “American”, yet Asians are not?
“Asians are Asians. Asians are taking over America! Go back to where you came from!”
Oh, you mean East L.A. fool?
Why is it that everywhere I go I am referred to as the “Chinese girl”?
Not that being Chinese is bad. No, not at all, but I’m NOT Chinese.
My blood is of Korean descent. Perhaps I have some Chinese blood in me.
But that isn’t the issue.
What the issue really is is that there is a revolution.
And I AM THE REVOLUTION.
I AM THE FUCKING REVOLUTION!
Why is it that woman of my descent mutilate themselves to be socially acceptable?
They go under the knife to enlarge their eyes, when in fact their eyes are not open.
THEIR EYES ARE NOT OPEN.
They go under the knife to slim their calves,
To sever a chunk of muscles to slim their calves
Aren’t their legs their most commonly used way of transportation?
Is it a surprise that they cannot walk after this mutilation?
Why are these girls surprised?
“A woman’s past can be forgiven, but her ugliness cannot.” They say.
“It is a natural instinctive quality for women to beautify themselves.” THEY SAY.
That’s pure bloody poppycock.
What defines ugly?
Who defined ugly?
Take me to him or her.
I will beat them to a bloody pulp and drink them like my fucking orange juice.
If there are such standards in society then I don’t want to be a part of society.
I said, IF THERE ARE SUCH STANDARDS IN SOCIETY THEN I DON’T WANT TO BE A PART OF IT!
There is a revolution.
This revolution may save society, may anger society.
This revolution may open the eyes of people who thought their eyes were too small.
This revolution may open the eyes of people who sliced their eyes too big.
This revolution may open the eyes of people who judge each other and themselves.
This revolution may open the eyes of people who cannot forgive.
This revolution may open the eyes of people who cannot show compassion or mercy.
This revolution may open the eyes of people.
It may. It may not. It may shut the eyes of those people.
If that’s what it takes to get the word out, then so be it.
If that’s what it takes to spread TRUTH, then so be it.
Because there IS a revolution.
I AM THE REVOLUTION.

Last night was truly an anomaly.

Lisa's 22nd birthday. I got her a very cute transparent shirt that I left in Stella's car. It was great seeing all of the girls again, but alas the venue was not very conducive to conversation, so I didn't get to really talk to many of them.

I was also blitzed comatose the whole time, which I guess would impede my social skills quite a bit.

It was nothing short of hilarious to sit and watch my friends get scooped away in mid-sentence by the waiters who descend like vultures upon the nearest single-looking girl. We'd literally be in the middle of a conversation, and the waiter obviously knew we were talking, when --off she goes!---she'd be dragged away still trying to shout back the last half of her sentence to those at the table. This happened a number of times, but it didn't get any less amusing (although a tad rude to me, it seemed).

I must say that the decorations were really nice, but that doesn't make up for the complete lack of presentable males. Stella and Candice and I went to the smoking room to share a smoke, and right when we lit up, this magically annoying guy suddenly appeared, took quite a liking to stella (or the cigarette in her hand?), and brought back a friend to partake of our tobacco. Ugh. And he couldn't even take a decent hit--ran to the trashcan coughing, while still attempting to brag about his job and company etc.etc., and I thought, "This is why I do not frequent these places--weak-ass guys who have so little game that they need to pay exorbitant amounts of money to even get a chance." What kind of drunken stupor would any self-respecting girl have to be in to ever give any of these creeps the time of day?

I made a brave attempt at dancing, but for some reason I just wasn't feeling the place. I didn't even get up to dance to The Ditty, and i LOVE that song! i can't believe i used to enjoy this sort of environment. I kinda wished I was back where i was earlier that night, in a bar somewhere in k-town talking about preemptive war against Iraq and getting a PADI Openwater diving license.

So here i am, $30 poorer and none the wiser. I never learn.

I watched Amelie tonight, and I am now lovesick for Paris. I was exhausted while I was there, but the sight of the Metro stops in the movie brought back everything--
the strange, acrid smell underground that was a mix between machine grease and stale air, the bright "Sortie" signs, the endless steps of stairs, the advertisements that somehow seem less intrusive and more decorative than ads here....fumbling around in my pockets for the black-striped green Metro ticket, and squinting to see whether it's been used or not...the Seine at night...sharing a joint with a bunch of random French guys who spoke almost no English so that I had to communicate with them in my horrible Spanish...Falling asleep on the bridge to the Ile de la Cite....sitting in the sun in front of the fountain at the Luxembourg Gardens...getting ass-drunk and stumbling around Sephora on the Champs Elysses...I can close my eyes and imagine it quite clearly, but there is a good chance that I will not see this place again until I am in a completely different stage of life.

I need another journey.

"...We cannot see who we truly are; we cannot see that we are not free. This is why humans resist life. To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive--the risk to be alive and express what we really are. We have learned to live life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else."

--Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

a depressing thought:

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms: that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave: that all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried underneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to stand. Only [on] the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation be safely built.

--Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not A Christian, 1957, p. 107

haven't written in awhile because i am in a state of intense anxiety and anticipation regarding a very precarious but impossibly great-sounding job opportunity. i cant even think straight, i worry incessantly that what may be my only chance at success in life will slip through my fingers as i watch helplessly. why must the hiring process for large companies be so bureaucratic? sigh.

at least i have a pretty fun weekend to look forward to:

Friday: Estrogen night in LA with the girls, take-out sushi, wine, Sex and the City, and Amelie.
Saturday: Split a *** with stella and head to Le Prive (gross!) for Lisa's birthday (yay!) but hopefully stel and i will be too faded to care about the excessively creepy guys who lurk in those shadowy booths.
Sunday: BBQ for Francis's b-day, so i finally get to see all of my old old homies whom i have not hung out with in a long time, and whom i miss a great deal.